AW Rostamani Group: Driving innovation by unifying data across multiple businesses
About AW Rostamani Group
The AW Rostamani Group is a conglomerate based in the United Arab Emirates, renowned for its diverse business portfolio which includes automotive, real estate, retail, logistics, technology, and more. The multiple businesses that make up AW Rostamani are united by their ambition to grow and their commitment to enrich the lives of customers through exceptional products and services.
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Contact usAW Rostamani leverages Google Cloud to unify its data across multiple businesses working in several diverse sectors, driving innovation, enhancing customer experiences, and boosting sustainability efforts.
Google Cloud results
- Accelerates growth by tapping into new business opportunities and revenue streams based on unified data from BigQuery
- Improves customer experiences by offering tailored services based on data analytics with Google Cloud
- Increases development speed and application flexibility with Google Kubernetes Engine
- Reduces infrastructure costs and increases scalability with serverless technologies on Google Cloud
- Helps to improve sustainability practices across the conglomerate with improved reporting and responsible resource consumption
Unifies data across multiple businesses on BigQuery
In 1954, when brothers Abdul Wahid and Abdullah Hassan Al Rostamani took an investment of 100 rupees to open Dubai’s first bookshop, the glittering skylines of the United Arab Emirates were still only a vision. As the buildings rose and the region’s economy grew, so did the family business. Today, the AW Rostamani Group is a conglomerate with a vast array of distinct operations, extending its reach from its UAE base to the UK, mainland Europe, and India.
From automotive dealerships to property development, from LED manufacturing to logistics and transportation, each business unit has its own rhythm, its own cycle of innovation—and its own challenges. The automotive sector, for example, which has long been a stable pillar of AW Rostamani’s enterprise, is at a crossroads. The combustion engine is making way for more sustainable alternatives and customer behaviors are shifting, with fewer visits to showrooms and more online rentals and purchases.
Getting a unified picture with Google Cloud
AW Rostamani's diverse business operations create unique data requirements and customer journeys. For instance, in the automotive sector, data starts from digital marketing efforts and funnels through CRM systems and ERP transactions, ultimately resulting in customer relationship maintenance throughout the vehicle's lifetime. But in other industries, data and customer journeys look quite different.
This complex system of interactions, along with a very fragmented data landscape, made it challenging to get a unified picture of the customers and calculate the Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) across the different business units. Each unit was interested in its specific CLTV, while the organization sought to understand the overall CLTV across the various business sectors. To bring it all together, AW Rostamani needed a big data solution, and for Sebastian Samuel, Chief Information Officer at AW Rostamani, Google Cloud offered the most bang for the buck.
"Big data solutions tend to come with an enormous capital investment before you can even demonstrate the value of the solution. This pay-as-you-go and pay-as-you-grow approach of Google Cloud, coupled with the platform’s performance and scalability, made all the difference for us when we first started this data project."
—Sebastian Samuel, Chief Information Officer, AW RostamaniProving the concept with a $300 credit
Samuel and his team started their Google Cloud journey with a $300 BigQuery credit. "Big data solutions tend to come with an enormous capital investment before you can even demonstrate the value of the solution," says Samuel. "The pay-as-you-go and pay-as-you-grow approach of Google Cloud, coupled with the platform’s performance and scalability, made all the difference for us when we first started our data project."
After Samuel and his team had used the credit to ingest enterprise data into Google Cloud, AW Rostamani Group’s employees were able to create their own real-time dashboards to help them make data-based decisions. Teams were quick to understand where to find their business data, and Google Cloud made it easy to build analytical solutions on top of this data.
"By transitioning to an application-agnostic data lake using Google BigQuery, we turned our data challenges into opportunities," says Samuel. "AW Rostamani now has the capability to provide a comprehensive view of its operations and customers. We can offer cross-functional, cross-business, and within-business analyses, providing visibility that can help address future business needs and opportunities."
High-power compute in a fraction of a second
BigQuery was just the beginning. AW Rostamani steadily expanded its use of Google Cloud solutions as part of its multi-cloud transformation. In a drive for containerization to speed up the development of new features and applications, the company adopted Google Kubernetes Engine to manage its workloads in a more flexible, scalable manner. They also adopted Dataflow for streaming analytics and Cloud Operations for management capabilities, as well as serverless technologies, such as Cloud Run and Cloud Functions.
"Every single digital product we use is on Google Cloud infrastructure in a serverless manner," says Samuel. "We can get high power compute in a fraction of a second as code, and we don't need to buy huge servers and keep them in our data center. And because the technology is fully managed by Google Cloud, we don’t need to spend our valuable time, money, and engineering resources on maintenance."
"Every single digital product we use is on Google Cloud infrastructure in a serverless manner. We can get high power compute in a fraction of a second as code, and we don't need to buy huge servers and keep them in our data center."
—Sebastian Samuel, Chief Information Officer, AW RostamaniBuilding better, smarter, and more reliable customer experiences
AW Rostamani’s IT department has evolved with its new data capabilities. For instance, it grew two entirely new functions: data science and digital product management. "With our data science team, we can explore algorithmic business possibilities, helping us to leverage data to find and use new revenue streams," says Samuel. "And our digital product management team empowers us to conceive and launch new digital products based on innovative business models that sit on top of our cloud architecture."
One of the first digital products to come out of this transformation is "Subscribe Me", an application that’s offered by AW Rostamani’s automotive business. Customers can use the app to subscribe to different types of cars for varying durations, catering to diverse needs and preferences. "If you want an off-road car to explore the deserts today and a commuter car for work tomorrow, you can use Subscribe Me to get the right car at the right time," says Samuel. "By leveraging data on Google Cloud, we can tailor our subscription to each customer and offer them packaged deals based on their individual needs and car usage."
Customers using digital services from any of the many AW Rostamani companies benefit from more reliable services thanks to automatic scaling. "In the past, we had occasional performance issues that slowed down our apps, harming the customer experience," says Samuel. "Thanks to autoscaling with Google Cloud, we can just scale up and down according to the business demand. We could have millions of customers using any of our platforms at the same time, and still wouldn’t need to worry about it."
Operationalizing sustainability across the conglomerate
Sustainability is another key driver for AW Rostamani’s move to the cloud. As part of its "Green IT" initiative, the company aims to ensure responsible consumption of resources and minimize electronic waste through sustainable architecture. Google Cloud plays a crucial role in this shift.
By leveraging data analytics and sustainability reports from Google Cloud, AW Rostamani has been steadily improving their own internal sustainability reporting. The business recently embarked on a group-wide Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiative, creating a sustainability roadmap for every business unit. "You can only manage what you can measure," says Samuel. "Our Google Cloud-enabled analytics capabilities, combined with the responsible use of computing resources and adopting a circular economy, help us to reduce our carbon footprint and operate more sustainably."
Tapping into new business models and revenue streams
With a solid cloud foundation in place, the team can now focus on accelerating its growth by experimenting with new business models and finding new revenue streams. Currently, Samuel and his team are working closely with Google Cloud to monetize its many APIs by implementing professional API management with Apigee—but that’s just one initiative among many.
"Adopting Google Cloud opened up so many new opportunities for AW Rostamani," says Samuel. "With a small initial investment, we've been able to demonstrate capability, provide compelling business cases, develop new solutions, and quickly scale up our offerings. Now we can focus on what we do best: deliver on our ambition to grow."
"Adopting Google Cloud opened up so many new opportunities for AW Rostamani. With a small initial investment, we've been able to demonstrate capability, provide compelling business cases, develop new solutions, and quickly scale up our offerings. Now we can focus on what we do best: deliver on our ambition to grow."
—Sebastian Samuel, Chief Information Officer, AW RostamaniTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About AW Rostamani Group
The AW Rostamani Group is a conglomerate based in the United Arab Emirates, renowned for its diverse business portfolio which includes automotive, real estate, retail, logistics, technology, and more. The multiple businesses that make up AW Rostamani are united by their ambition to grow and their commitment to enrich the lives of customers through exceptional products and services.